November 21, 2016 Kilacha Agriculture and Training Institute (KALTI)

Today is actually Saturday the 26th and I am now playing catch up on my posts.  Google Blogger has been giving me headaches as when I load it from Tanzania it changes the language to Swahili and no matter the approach I took with it I could not change the language to English.  Today I got smart and logged into my home router via a VPN and now Blogger thinks I am sitting in Billings.

I traveled by car on Monday to the KALTI which is only about 40 km from the hotel I was at; however, that turns into an 1 1/2 hour drive through Moshi Town and across the country side to the training site.  Upon my arrival I was immediately fed and continue to be fed four times a day ;).
 After lunch Melkiades Msimbe (referred to as Msimbe (ph: mis sim be), the Operations Manager, took me on a tour of the facility.

(Msimbe on the left)

The center, owned and operated by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Moshi, is composed of two strategic entities, the Production Center and the Training Center and are conveniently separated by the highway.  The Production Center has several profit centers, Laying Hens, Pork, Diary, Fish (Talipia), Apiary, Grains (Maize and Sunflower).

The Poultry production is the main source of income for the institute with approximately 35,000 laying hens.  The laying hens produce approximately the same number of eggs each laying cycle (a bit over a day) for the productive life (60 weeks).  The institute buys the laying hens from Europe, mainly the Netherlands, as chicks and fly them here.  The chicks are raised in a light controlled environment to bring them into production as rapidly as possible.

Workers gather the laid eggs daily and inspect them.  Fertile eggs go to the hatchery they are incubated until hatched.  A hatch occurs every Thursday, so currently there are 35,000 laying hens hatched a week that have to be sold.  Customers come from all over Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya to purchase the chicks weekly.

The laying, incubating and rearing houses are strictly controlled to prevent the spread of disease.  To aid in that effort there is a concrete area dug out of the drive way that is flooded with bleach and water as a bio-wash to ensure no bugs are carried into or out of the production area.  Additionally, workers must wear protective coveralls and rubber boots; therefore, I have no pictures to share at this time.

The institute is located at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro which is the home to a rain forest; yet, the plain where the institute is at is arid which leaves the traveled areas of the ground looking like red dust.


(Maize stalks stored for diary feed)                            (Diary barn)

The institute runs about 40 head of diary with about 15 cows in daily milk production.  Milking is done by hand here by laborers who earn about a dollar a day.  They are raising about 25 pigs presently and building up their numbers to around 50 producing sows.  The weaned pigs are sold as the primary product with culled sows and bores for meat production.  The fishery was recently put into production as a test with its stock being consumed by the institute.  Plans are afoot to ramp up production as a profit center.

The institute is composed of several hundred acres of irrigated crop land, half of which they have in production for Maize and Sunflower and the other half is rented out to farmers.  The Maize and Sunflower are milled on site to create feed for the livestock and poultry operations.  The institute has recently received a new grain processing machine from Germany that will be assembled in the coming weeks.  The institute plans on ramping up it operations to produce grain feeds as a profit center.




On the north side of the road is the training institute housing approximately 200 women and 200 men from the ages of 18 - 23 studying agriculture production, hotel management, food preparation, tour and tour guiding.  The programs are two years in length on a two semester per year cycle.
to attend the institute a prospective student applies through the central government; if they meet the minimal government standards the institute is notified of the arriving student.The cost per semester is approximately 1,000,000 Tanzanian shillings ($454 US).  For that amount students are housed, fed, receive medical care and an education.

One of the projects being run at the training institute is a bio-gas capture program.  Manure from the livestock classes is deposited into septic tank like repositories, doused with some water and gas is piped off to the kitchen for cooking.  (Being on the equator there is no heat in any of the buildings here.  Folks are amazed that my home has a heating system in it)


(bio-gas field)

The training institute is used as a testing ground for production testing and presently the students are raising rabbits as a cash crop.  Everything raised by the students during their course work is sold and the profits used to keep the cost of their education down.

Unlike its neighbor, Uganda, Tanzania has a vast supply of cement; therefore, most of the buildings are constructed of cement block.  The institute runs it own rock crusher and brick making plants primarily for its own needs; however, excess aggregate and blocks are sold on the local economy.

Rock is purchased locally and fed through a crusher producing 3/4", 1/2", 1/4" aggregate and dust.  All of the work except for the crushing machine is done by day laborers for about a dollar a day.


Running the crusher


Separating the aggregate

  
Stockpiling the aggregate.

The institute runs a Social Center that serves food and drink in a nice garden setting; a perfect place to relax at the end of a long day with a Kilimanjaro beer with new friends.

November 21, 2016 Kilacha Agriculture and Training Institute (KALTI)

Today is actually Saturday the 26th and I am now playing catch up on my posts.  Google Blogger has been giving me headaches as when I load it from Tanzania it changes the language to Swahili and no matter the approach I took with it I could not change the language to English.  Today I got smart and logged into my home router via a VPN and now Blogger thinks I am sitting in Billings.

I traveled by car on Monday to the KALTI which is only about 40 km from the hotel I was at; however, that turns into an 1 1/2 hour drive through Moshi Town and across the country side to the training site.  Upon my arrival I was immediately fed and continue to be fed four times a day ;).
 After lunch Melkiades Msimbe (referred to as Msimbe (ph: mis sim be), the Operations Manager, took me on a tour of the facility.

(Msimbe on the left)

The center, owned and operated by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Moshi, is composed of two strategic entities, the Production Center and the Training Center and are conveniently separated by the highway.  The Production Center has several profit centers, Laying Hens, Pork, Diary, Fish (Talipia), Apiary, Grains (Maize and Sunflower).

The Poultry production is the main source of income for the institute with approximately 35,000 laying hens.  The laying hens produce approximately the same number of eggs each laying cycle (a bit over a day) for the productive life (60 weeks).  The institute buys the laying hens from Europe, mainly the Netherlands, as chicks and fly them here.  The chicks are raised in a light controlled environment to bring them into production as rapidly as possible.

Workers gather the laid eggs daily and inspect them.  Fertile eggs go to the hatchery they are incubated until hatched.  A hatch occurs every Thursday, so currently there are 35,000 laying hens hatched a week that have to be sold.  Customers come from all over Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya to purchase the chicks weekly.

The laying, incubating and rearing houses are strictly controlled to prevent the spread of disease.  To aid in that effort there is a concrete area dug out of the drive way that is flooded with bleach and water as a bio-wash to ensure no bugs are carried into or out of the production area.  Additionally, workers must wear protective coveralls and rubber boots; therefore, I have no pictures to share at this time.

The institute is located at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro which is the home to a rain forest; yet, the plain where the institute is at is arid which leaves the traveled areas of the ground looking like red dust.


(Maize stalks stored for diary feed)                            (Diary barn)

The institute runs about 40 head of diary with about 15 cows in daily milk production.  Milking is done by hand here by laborers who earn about a dollar a day.  They are raising about 25 pigs presently and building up their numbers to around 50 producing sows.  The weaned pigs are sold as the primary product with culled sows and bores for meat production.  The fishery was recently put into production as a test with its stock being consumed by the institute.  Plans are afoot to ramp up production as a profit center.

The institute is composed of several hundred acres of irrigated crop land, half of which they have in production for Maize and Sunflower and the other half is rented out to farmers.  The Maize and Sunflower are milled on site to create feed for the livestock and poultry operations.  The institute has recently received a new grain processing machine from Germany that will be assembled in the coming weeks.  The institute plans on ramping up it operations to produce grain feeds as a profit center.




On the north side of the road is the training institute housing approximately 200 women and 200 men from the ages of 18 - 23 studying agriculture production, hotel management, food preparation, tour and tour guiding.  The programs are two years in length on a two semester per year cycle.
to attend the institute a prospective student applies through the central government; if they meet the minimal government standards the institute is notified of the arriving student.The cost per semester is approximately 1,000,000 Tanzanian shillings ($454 US).  For that amount students are housed, fed, receive medical care and an education.

One of the projects being run at the training institute is a bio-gas capture program.  Manure from the livestock classes is deposited into septic tank like repositories, doused with some water and gas is piped off to the kitchen for cooking.  (Being on the equator there is no heat in any of the buildings here.  Folks are amazed that my home has a heating system in it)


(bio-gas field)

The training institute is used as a testing ground for production testing and presently the students are raising rabbits as a cash crop.  Everything raised by the students during their course work is sold and the profits used to keep the cost of their education down.

Unlike its neighbor, Uganda, Tanzania has a vast supply of cement; therefore, most of the buildings are constructed of cement block.  The institute runs it own rock crusher and brick making plants primarily for its own needs; however, excess aggregate and blocks are sold on the local economy.

Rock is purchased locally and fed through a crusher producing 3/4", 1/2", 1/4" aggregate and dust.  All of the work except for the crushing machine is done by day laborers for about a dollar a day.


Running the crusher


Separating the aggregate

  
Stockpiling the aggregate.

The institute runs a Social Center that serves food and drink in a nice garden setting; a perfect place to relax at the end of a long day with a Kilimanjaro beer with new friends.

Mt. Kimamjaro, Tanzania

I am presently in Tanzania near Mt. Kilimanjaro on a Farmer to Farmer assignment for Catholic Relief Services.  I left home in Billings on the 18^th of November on a route that took me through Minneapolis to Amsterdam and then onto Mt. Kilimanjaro International Airport.  Overall the flights took about 30 hours with a long layover in Minneapolis (about six hours) and a shorter (3 hour) layover in Amsterdam.  The bright spot of such long travel was twofold on this trip.  First, upon arriving at Minneapolis I saw the new John Grisham book, The Whistler”  was out which I immediately purchased and read, finishing last evening at the hotel Uhuru in Moshi, Tanzania (TZ).  The second, meeting a very interesting retired 3^rd grade teacher from Wisconsin who was traveling with one of her son’s family to Budapest and on to Vienna. 

What a great seat mate she was.  Raised in Rhode Island, meeting a serviceman form Wisconsin who returned with him for a few years so he could finish his collegiate career has made her home there ever since.  We shared many great stories and the trip over to Amsterdam went very quickly.

The last leg of the flight seemed much longer although it was only an hour or so longer.  My seatmates were not as engaging and I was not so much either as I was pretty worn out already.  The flight was uneventful and we landed about 8:30 local time in the dark. 

Immigration was an interesting experience as well.  I had to purchase a business visa as well as a tourist visa to volunteer that totaled $250 US. 

After Immigration, I had to clear customs.  I had brought 3 suitcases and a backpack with me to carry my gear.  One suitcase for my clothes, one for the training documents and the last for items carried over for a previous CRS volunteer.   There were two signs for customs; one for items to be declared and the other no declaration.  I searched about for a sign that would tell me what the value of goods being brought into Tanzania required declaration, but could not find any.  Erroring on the side of caution I went to declare the goods I was bringing in which ended up consisting of running the luggage through an x-ray machine, the same type of machine as when you go through security in an airport.  I walked to the other side and picked up the luggage and carted it off; that was it. 

A driver picked me up from the airport and the ride from the airport to the hotel was in the dark so I could not see much of the surrounding area.  From what I could see I could tell the infrastructure here is much more advanced than where I had been before in Uganda.  The buildings looked modern and well-constructed and the road was in good condition.

We arrived at the Lutheran Guest House hotel, Uhuru in Moshi, TZ around 10:30 pm local time.  True to African custom I was warmly greeted by an English-speaking receptionist and was quickly shown to my room.  The room is spacious with hot and cold running water and air conditioning; amenities that can be hit and miss in this part of the world.  I was ready to sleep, however, the immediate problem is my body thought it was noon so it was not quite ready to sleep while my brain was exhausted.  I dozed on and off a few times while reading “The Whistler” and eventually fell off after completing it around 3 am.  I rose about 9:30 am just in time to catch some breakfast.

My contact, Mekee, a Hawaiian Peace Corp volunteer, came by the room after breakfast to pick up the supplies I brought over for the CRS volunteer.  Mekee is an interesting young man who has been here about ten months working in a mountain town area about four hours from the hotel.  I sent him off with the suitcase which he would carry back as a passenger on a small motorcycle.

I took my first look for Mt. Kilimanjaro from the hotel around noon and could not see it.  I went to the guide book to get some facts about the region and learned that Kilimanjaro is usually not visible until late afternoon, 4 – 6:30 pm after the clouds have worn off.  I went back to an observation point at the hotel and got my first looks at the famed mountain.

The mountain peak is a little over 19,000 feet above sea level and the tallest mountain in Africa.  It is an extinct volcano that still lets out some steam and is the reason most people come to Tanzania.  There are several routes to trek to its peaks that are non-technical; however, they all take minimally four days to reach so I will not be making that accent. 

I am wrapping up my first full day in Tanzania just loitering about the hotel and its beautiful grounds.

On Monday, the 21^st I will be met and taken to the Kilacha Training Center where I will spend the remainder of my time working with the Accounting Department.  An earlier volunteer was here a year ago and set the Training Center up on QuickBooks.  My assignment is to teach the managers, accountants and bookkeepers how to use the program.  Additionally, I need to write a procedures manual and help integrate the Excel spreadsheet accounting they presently use into the new system.

My expectation is to have a reasonable internet connection at the Training Center so I hope to be able to make daily posts with my comments, insights and pictures.

Mike

20 November 2016